


The girl he loves is crimson, red like the autumn leaves that lay abandoned

by LiveLoveDoritos



Series: Crimson; blood, roses and thorns [1]
Category: Carmen Sandiego (Cartoon 2019)
Genre: F/M, Gray POV, Gray has scars, Gray is traumatized, Gray missed Carmen, Mild Smut, Reunions, Sadness, carmen thought gray was dead, hints of depression, its not really smut so can't really classify it as such??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:02:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28817511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiveLoveDoritos/pseuds/LiveLoveDoritos
Summary: She is older, now. Her features are sharper, more pronounced. The smile around her mouth is softer too, sadder. Her eyes are less tense. Her crimson hair is still long, but shorter than it was. She’s wearing a red summer dress, loose and swishy, fitting her perfectly.“Hey, Graham,” she says quietly, her fingers skirt against the fabric of his ugly brown couch, “Long time no see.”
Relationships: Gray | Crackle/Carmen Sandiego | Black Sheep
Series: Crimson; blood, roses and thorns [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2192790
Comments: 44
Kudos: 338





	The girl he loves is crimson, red like the autumn leaves that lay abandoned

**Author's Note:**

> I saw season four. had a breakdown about it. bon appetite.

It’s late, almost four in the morning when Gray finally finds his way back to his apartment. His late-night shift at the bar had been a busy one, people seemed to be drunker than normal, dancing away the hours under the flashing disco lights like it was their last night on earth. 

The temptation to pick every pocket in there was unreal, but Gray has had enough of the thrill of thieving. It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth now, the memories tainted darkly by how they un-made him. How they un-made her. 

It’s still hard sometimes, in the long run. The amnesia gets hard to handle sometimes. The daily blackouts are few and in between now but happen often enough that he’s worried about it. He’s had it ever since V.I.L.E scrambled his brain, and ACME decided to stir it all back counter-clockwise. He figures the skull-splitting headaches are another symptom of it as well and is just enough of a hindrance for him to have sought treatment at a hospital, but that didn’t matter. They did every test imaginable on earth and came up empty. 

Eventually, they gave him morphine to counteract the pain, but all it does is get him high. 

So sometimes, on the bad days, the sick days, when he lies in his bed, ready to die from the pain bouncing around in his skull, he thinks; I wish I never got involved. I would not have to go through this. It’s all her fault. 

And other times, better days, coherent days, he thinks; if I never got involved, I wouldn’t have known her, her smile, and the way the sunlight would flicker in the reflection of her teeth. 

He fumbles through the motions of fishing the keys out of his pocket and turning the lock, yawning loudly he stumbles into his living space. Bone tired and almost unable to keep his eyes open. There’s a pressure building up at the base of his skull, signaling the arrival of yet another headache. 

“Honey, I’m home,” he murmurs as he stumbles out of his coat and shoes without putting on the lights (lights will only make it worse) and blunders around in the dark in search of his bathroom door, cursing harshly when he stubs his toe against something sharp laying on the floor. 

He uses the toilet and brushes his teeth in the dim light of his phone screen as he checks his instagram feed. He downs two of the morphine tablets 

(it’s too much,

secretly, he hopes he won’t wake up)

So when he finally slinks in between the unwashed bedsheets, smelling of beer and smoke, he does not get back up when he hears a foreign creak of the door. 

…

The next few weeks are days full of boring repetition. Work. headaches. Blackouts. He tries to grow roses on the small of his balcony, but they don’t take to fruition, and Gray stops watering them when he realizes nothing grows. The dirt is too dead, and Gray’s hands are too violent. 

..

Sometimes, when everything’s worse than usual, he visits his mother, lets her coddle him, and takes care of him as if he’s five again. He’s done bad things and certainly doesn’t deserve love like that, but Gray is and will always be a thief. He steals the love she should reserve for other people instead and tucks it deep within the pockets of his soul, keeping it there until the end of times. 

He’s a selfish motherfucker, that’s a fact branded on his forehead in carbon. His mother either turns a blind eye, or ignores it entirely because he feels like her world will crumble if she ever came to find out what he actually was, and is. 

So here’s what he doesn’t tell her; 

Mom, I’m a thief.

And he doesn’t tell her; 

Mom, I’m so goddamn sick. 

She doesn’t know shit. Ignorance is bliss, Gray supposes because unlike her, he _knows_ things. Has seen things he cannot forget. Things that are forever etched into his mind like a picture carved in stone. 

So he won’t tell her; 

Mom, there are bad, bad people in every dark corner of this world and I worked for them.

Nor will he ever tell her; 

Mom, I’ve killed people. I have innocent blood on my hands.

No. His mother looks at him like she has him figured out. Smart kid, talent, kind, and compassionate. 

She does not know about the crimes he committed. Doesn’t even know about how he used to steal the dollar bills from her purse just to shoot back some beer with people he thought were friends. Outcasts like him; bad folk. Most of them used drugs, snorted it up their noses and injected heroin in their crumbling veins like it was the only way of life. 

From them, he learned how to steel, to pick pockets like a trained pro. He nicked costly pieces of jewelry right from people’s wrists and wallets with hundreds of dollars from the pockets of rich men. 

Gray got hooked on the heist, an IV line to keep the thrum of his blood alive.

His mother thought he spent his time with a study group from school. All star students and ironed blazers and nerdy glasses. Even Gray knows it’s just wistful thinking on his mother’s part. He came home everyday with scuff marks on his face and bleeding and bruised knees, stinking of weed and alcohol. 

Still, now he’s grown, his mother turns a blind eye, smiles at him brightly when he comes over for coffee. He complains of a headache, and his mother coddles. He chews on dirt, jaw heavy, body heavier; dirt from which he grew his lies and tales. Dirt he wishes he could grow roses from. 

And she doesn’t know. 

She doesn’t know. 

…

There’s an instant, in the flash of lightning, he thinks he sees her right on the roof. Her red coat wavering tentatively in the wind. The rain falls down her body in rivulets, and her hand is on her fedora. 

Gray blinks; time seems to slow down, the lights of the city flicker on and off like that of a lighthouse. 

Gray blinks again -- and,

And she’s gone. 

…

He has the hands of a worker, his fingernails are always dirty, and he has callouses on the soft flesh of his palms. 

There are faint scars lining up his wrist, curving all the way down to the base of his thumb; an accident with a cat, he laughs, when someone brings it up. 

(Knife fight)

Another, ragged across his knuckles. Got it from a past job, he tells them. 

(A bullet grazed across his skin like fog will kiss the surface of a river) 

“You sure had dangerous work then,” a woman flirts with him, licking her lips and twirling her ashen blonde hair around her finger. Her lips are heart-shaped red. She’s tipsy, but sober enough to know what she’s doing. 

He winks at her, wiping off the bar. Something is twinging painfully in his chest, “you’ve got no idea, love.” 

…

It’s like this when he wakes up; morning light that peeks through the cheap curtains, slanting onto him and the sheets on his bed. He’s alone again, like he has been for weeks and months on end. 

There’s only one toothbrush on the bathroom sink, and only one pair of shoes down the hallway. His clothes linger, draped over the couch, and the floor and the one chair at his dinner table. He keeps his TV on to have some sort of chatter in the background because otherwise the entirety of his apartment would collapse in on itself in the deafening silence. 

His apartment becomes a tomb, one for his body to roam, obsolete.

..

There are red roses in her hair, stems braided into twirling locks. Her dress is cream colored, whipping in the wind. The ocean crashes against the cliffs --

(Gray doesn’t remember the island having cliffs so high up) 

\-- And she turns around to face him, and she smiles when their eyes meet. The sky is still behind her, littered with thousands and thousands of stars, each one shining brighter than the other. It all pales in comparison to the sight before him. 

“Carmen,” he whispers. It smells like sea-salt. Every inch of him is warm.

“Hey Gray,” she says, voice soft. She reaches out a hand, and everything’s right in the world. 

He walks forward --

And he takes it, rough hand in rough hand, --

She smiles, and pulls out his crackle rod. Her expression changes from loving, to maddening. Now set in contempt for him, her eyes blank. The ocean starts roaring underneath them, swirling like a white bubbling mass. 

“Carmen,” He pleads, pulls his hands along her arms, her skin feels waxy underneath the pads of his fingers, “no,” 

And she presses the tip against his chest and she -- 

electrocutes him, and he stumbles backwards and starts --

Falling,

He’s falling, 

And he falls right back into Dr. Bellum’s chair-- and she --

She -- 

\-- White hot pain pierces through his head, and he screams, hoarse, and feral. Louder than he’s ever heard it. Somewhere, he hears someone laughing. 

And then he’s falling again lower and lower, his insides turning liquid. Now, now, now, his screams are caged behind his teeth and he’s falling, and tumbling, and flailing.

He reaches the ocean, mad with rage and he --

Wakes up safely in his own bed. 

… 

“What’re you daydreaming about?,” his coworker laughs, her swift hands dip glasses into the soapy water and pull them out to dry them immediately, “you haven’t paid attention to anything I said.”

Gray sighs deeply, putting a glass under the beer tap and sliding it towards the customer who asked for it, “your brother is getting a divorce and he and his ex-wife are fighting about who gets custody of their kid.” 

His coworker blinks, taken aback, “oookay,” she says, “so you _were_ listening.” 

He shrugs, “multi-tasking is a thing, Tasha.” 

She shakes her head, grinning slightly, “not for men.” 

But for professional thieves, it was definitely a must. You couldn’t just let your mind wander on whatever mission you were on. You had to be alert and always have a game-plan. Nothing happens in this joint Gray doesn’t know about. 

He doesn’t say that, though. Instead he says, “sexist much?” 

Tasha only laughs harder. 

…

Gray is no stranger to sadness, he feels it pulsing in his veins like the antibodies in his blood try to fight it as if it’s a virus. 

Something _hurts_ , it blooms in his gut like a weed, strangling his organs until everything is overgrown with moss that aches. It twirls up his spine like vines, curling around his ribs, tying knots into the soft of his bones. 

The month of July is bleak and grey, cold, and Gray feels like he’s slipping. The gloom threatens to choke him, curling tendrils around his throat and it squeezes. Hard. Painful. 

This is when he feels most alone. When he misses the thrill of stealing. There is nothing that keeps him alive, and sometimes he presses his nails into his skin just to feel something. 

He tells his mother, “I don’t feel like being around anymore,” 

His mother tells him, “But darling, there is so much to live for,” 

He bites his lip until it bleeds. 

It turns into August, September, and November 

Nothing changes; nothing stays the same. 

… 

He hasn’t seen her in four years. 

But here she is; alive and well, in the middle of his uncleaned apartment. 

She is older, now. Her features are sharper, more pronounced. The smile around her mouth is softer too, sadder. Her eyes are less tense. Her crimson hair is still long, but shorter than it was. She’s wearing a red summer dress, loose and swishy, fitting her perfectly.

“Hey, Graham,” she says quietly, her fingers skirt against the fabric of his ugly brown couch, “Long time no see.” 

He’s choking on his own spit, his hands have long since abandoned the handles of his shopping bags, his groceries are all spread out over the floor now, but he only has eyes for her. 

“Ca--Carmen,” he manages, lips parted in shock. 

“I thought you were dead for a long time,” she continues, “I’ve blamed and hated myself for the better part of four years,” 

He can’t stop staring. At the curve of her hips and the sweep of her hair, falling around her face like a blood-dripping halo. The silver band on her slender finger. Her bare legs, and her bruised knees. 

“I finally worked through the guilt enough to ask the chief where you might have been put to rest,” she swallows, won’t look right at him, “I wanted to pay you a visit, apologize.” 

She laughs bitterly, “Imagine my surprise when I find out you’re alive and well, living right here, in Sydney.” 

Silence falls on them like a heavy blanket; weighted, and dark. Her eyes dart from his right to his left, and it occurs to him he should say something. 

“Yeah, Uhm,” he says hoarsely, he can’t quite get the right words. “Uhm, I’m alive,” he blinks, she smiles. He says, “why are you here?” 

“To apologize,” she says earnestly, taking a few steps forward. Her dress swishes around her thighs, “what I did to you, Gray, it was horrible, and I’m so, so sorry.” 

He swallows away something heavy. “You were brainwashed by V.I.L.E. You thought you did what was right. It’s okay.” 

She shakes her head, “no, it’s not, I- I should’ve been better. I should’ve been more alert. I hurt you, there is no coming back from that.” 

He feels venom coat his tongue, and sting his eyes, but it’s unwelcome. _There’s no place for bitter grief when she’s home_ , he thinks.

“Carmen, stop blaming yourself. I told the Chief not to tell you about me,” he says, shifting on his feet, “I didn’t wanna complicate your life any further.” 

She shakes her head frantically, “not you, you wouldn’t have complicated it. Not at all.” 

He smiles sadly. There’s something aching in his chest. “I gave you an out, Carmen, I wanted you to live your own life. You didn’t need bad memories to tarnish whatever good you had.”

“You’re not a bad memory, Gray,” she says, her smile is small as she tentatively looks up at him, eyes roaming over his face to gauge his reaction, “you never were. You don’t know how badly I wished I could tell you everything so you could join me and so I didn’t have to lose sight of you again.” 

She bites her lip, wiping furiously at her eyes. “I thought I killed you, Gray. It hurt to think I would never see you again, and that it would all be because of me.” A tear rolls down her face, and down her chin, only to splatter apart against his carpet. 

“It’s okay,” Gray says,”Carmen, it’s okay, it’s not your fault. I told the Chief to not say anything about me. If anything, it’s my fault.” 

She shakes her head, rubbing at her cheeks. "No, Gray, I--" 

He’s bone-tired. He spreads his arms, “Let's not argue who of us is more guilty, just come here and give me a hug.” 

They’re hugging in mere moments, Carmen wraps her arms around his waist, her nose is pressed against his clavicle, and he can feel her warm breath on his skin. 

“I missed you,” he breathes, melting against her warm skin, like snow in front of the sun.

She releases air through her nose, “I missed you too,” she whispers and cries even harder. 

…

When she finally stops, he leads her to the balcony, the sun is setting already, kissing the horizon, and the sky blushes in furious pink, orange, and red. A mild breeze blows any cloud away. 

“It’s beautiful here,” Carmen says, leaning on the railing. 

Gray looks at her, saying nothing in return. Together they watch the sunset, and the rising of the moon, who brings millions of little stars with her. 

“Remember we used to do this at the beach on V.I.L.E island?” Gray asks. 

Carmen’s smile falters only a little bit, but quickly puts herself together again, “Yeah,” she chuckles, “We always skipped dinner for it.” 

“But coach Brunt always kept a sandwich or two behind for us,” The memories are vivid and clear now, like pristine glass, “she was glad you had a friend.” 

Carmen wrinkles her nose, “she was scared you wanted me to do things with you, though. You’re the reason I got the whole sex talk. Condoms over cucumbers and all.” 

Gray stifles a laugh, pulling a disgusted face, “I don’t think there’s anything worse than getting the sex talk from Coach Brunt.” 

Carmen winks playfully at him, “ohhh, I can count a few things,” she says, and presses a finger to his forehead. 

He bats her finger away, “alright, alright,” he laughs, “point taken.” 

“Do you ever miss it?” Carmen asks, just a few beats after a silence. 

“Miss what?” 

“V.I.L.E island.” 

He thinks for a moment. The only thing he missed from V.I.L.E was his time with her. “No,” he says, looks her straight in the eyes, “I only missed you.” 

She grins instead of answering, smiling up at him with gleaming teeth. Her eyes are bloodshot and shiny, glittering with starlight, and she stands there, on his balcony, with her little red dress and her black sandals and her curly crimson hair, and he thinks; 

You are the most beautiful thing on earth. 

He leans forward, tucking her hair behind her ear, “I never realized how pretty you actually are.” 

She laughs, pushing his hand away. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Graham Calloway.” She teases. 

He shrugs, “wasn’t flattery, love, I was stating an obvious truth.” 

She raises a playful eyebrow, smirking a little, and then her mouth is on his. 

...

She kisses wetly and sharply and with the sexual prowess of someone who's never done it before. Gray puts a hand on her cheek and guides her.

He feels cinders hot as fire explodes in his stomach as he rolls his tongue along with hers. He inches her body closer to her, suddenly feeling the urge to be as close to her as he physically can. He puts his arms around her waist, lifts her up, and walks them back into his apartment. 

...

He moans softly into the silent air, his hand tangled up in Carmen’s hair. His breathing is shallow, intermingling with her little gasps for air. 

“I never believed I could have you this way,” he tells her. 

“You’re crazy,” she comments. Their lips find each other like magnets and steel. 

...

His hands are on her hips, and she presses her fingers feverishly against his shoulders as he takes her on tousled, blue sheets. His name is on her tongue like a prayer, and it washes over him like salvation and forgiveness. 

Her tan skin gleams in the light of the nightstand, she shines like the moon, and she’s warm as the sun. 

…

His whole naked body is littered with scars, white and jagged running over his pale skin like a bad patchwork. She kisses each and every one. 

"I never knew you had so many, how lonely you must have been." She whispers, kissing his collarbone. Then his chest. 

He sobs in her arms like a child. 

…

He kisses like he's drowning. Every touch, every taste, everything, is desperate for her. And he doesn't want it to end. He wants to capture the moment in a jar and shelve it in a cabinet where he doesn't ever have to let go of it again. 

…

“So,” he asks, tracing an intricate pattern on her bare shoulder, “how long are you staying in town?” 

Her hand ghosts over his chest, swiftly, and lovingly, “don’t know, you tell me.” 

He raises his eyebrows, “you have nowhere else to be?” 

She shrugs, her hair tickles against his collarbone. “Nah, not really, not unless you want me to be somewhere else.” 

He’s as quick as the snap of a rubber band, “no,” he says determined, “stay.” 

Then, “Please?” 

And so she does. 

...

Two weeks later, his apartment is clean, and there are two toothbrushes on his bathroom sink.

Five matryoshka dolls decorate their windowsill.


End file.
